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For race, there is one vote for Hobbit and two votes for Elf. There is one vote for Dwarf.

No one cared about gender (and Dwarf only had one vote), so I will play a female.

The vote for class becomes tricky. There was a vote for Lore-Keeper, which doesn't exist and was probably a troll vote from my kid. There were two votes for "thief" which in the game would be closest to a Burglar. Burglars can only be played by The Race of Man or Hobbits.

Because opinions about race were stated before opinions about class, I'll play as an Elf. Because Elves cannot play as burglars, today will be the day to give opinions about which playable Elf class I'll play.

I'm kind of obviously against the idea of writing a book by committee, but what other things do I love that my ego would let me have others give feedback? MMORPGs would work. Here's my plan:

I pick the game. I'm currently playing LotRO, so it only makes sense to do this with something I'm already paying for.

I'll play the character every day with an update and screen shots included. I think 3 hours is a decent amount of daily play time, so I'll only get accomplished what can be done in that time frame (meaning that I won't go off for an extra hour mining or whatnot to be able to craft something).

I have a VIP account, so I'm not restricted to any certain quest path. I won't be spending any LotRO Store points on the character, either. That being said, I do already have mounts for any character I start due to my pre-order of Isengard (yes, that means you, the committee will be able to pick which color pony I ride).

I won't do monster play. I've tried it, I'm not a fan.

I won't be creating extra characters to help this character (no extra gathering or money), the character will be noobish in regards to self-sufficiency.

With those standards in place, it's time for all of you to start making Big Important Decisions. Majority rules, so contribute early and often. (Is there a way to make polls on G+?)

Where will I play? http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Social:List_of_Worlds If you have a world you think would be great and have first hand knowledge of, let me know. I currently am full on characters on Landroval. I am open to playing on Laurelin which is the official RP world, and if I do play on Laurelin I will make efforts to RP.

I'm kind of obviously against the idea of writing a book by committee, but what other things do I love that my ego would let me have others give feedback? MMORPGs would work. Here's my plan:

I pick the game. I'm currently playing LotRO, so it only makes sense to do this with something I'm already paying for.

I'll play the character every day with an update and screen shots included. I think 3 hours is a decent amount of daily play time, so I'll only get accomplished what can be done in that time frame (meaning that I won't go off for an extra hour mining or whatnot to be able to craft something).

I have a VIP account, so I'm not restricted to any certain quest path. I won't be spending any LotRO Store points on the character, either. That being said, I do already have mounts for any character I start due to my pre-order of Isengard (yes, that means you, the committee will be able to pick which color pony I ride).

I won't do monster play. I've tried it, I'm not a fan.

I won't be creating extra characters to help this character (no extra gathering or money), the character will be noobish in regards to self-sufficiency.

With those standards in place, it's time for all of you to start making Big Important Decisions. Majority rules, so contribute early and often. (Is there a way to make polls on G+?)

Where will I play? http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Social:List_of_Worlds If you have a world you think would be great and have first hand knowledge of, let me know. I currently am full on characters on Landroval. I am open to playing on Laurelin which is the official RP world, and if I do play on Laurelin I will make efforts to RP.

Wow, I'm starting to not recognize real names attached to people. I probably know your username or character name from many other fantastic far off places, but everything is getting foggy. Say hello and refresh my brain. You can even talk in code for the places we dare not speak of, because I like to solve puzzles.

Also I am starting to wonder if some of the people adding me are people who also send email to my gmail account thinking I am someone else. If so, I hope you've enjoyed all the jpgs I've sent you over the years.﻿

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. Amen.﻿

I've been on g+ for almost a week now and that has given me enough time to get used to the interface, appeal and application of the next big player in the social media industry.

So far there have been many reviews across the internet covering one, two or all three of these aspects. However, I've noticed that none of these reviews come from the perspective of an average facebook user. All the reviewers so far are understandably the big and influential players in today's social media i.e. they all enjoy a mass following on other social networks by similar social media enthusiasts.

I met quite a few of my friends over the last week and in pretty much every conversation I’ve brought up Google+. Interestingly enough, only about 10% of them knew about g+ to begin with. When I asked the ones that didn’t know as to why that was so, they said it was simply “because they didn’t hear about it over facebook!”This shows that the bulk of the internet community is not made up of people that are on google+ today with 5k+ followers, rather it’s composed of people that:

- have about 300-500 facebook friends- do not add unknowns to their friends list- do not live on the internet- like to use their facebook account for only staying in touch and sharing media within their small group of friends- do not like to blog or share pictures publicly- do not display info on their profile publicly- if they follow some celebrity on twitter or facebook, it is only because it is cool and everyone else did it- are very reluctant to switch from facebook because it satisfies their basic social networking needs- are very reluctant to even create a second facebook profile if the need arises (because building a new social profile, finding and adding friends is pretty much the equivalent of moving from one city to another IRL)- have friends that think along the same lines as above

Most of the above is true of me and my facebook friends. +Robert Scoble highlighted this problem in his blogs on why “Your Father, Wife and Mom won’t join Google+” but he couldn’t present a solution for it either because he doesn’t use social networks as an average facebook user.

So why am I here on google+ actively using it for the last few days and what do I think of it? In writing this article, I would like to present the much needed perspective of an average facebook user (AFU) on google+. This will hopefully make it easier for the readers to convince their average facebook friends to join google+.

To begin, I think it is important to realize that any social network needs to be analyzed in terms of all three aspects suggested above: interface, appeal, and application.

AppealWhen you’ll ask your AFU to join google+, immediately they’ll respond with a “Why?”. It is a very valid question. What does Google+ have that’ll appeal to the AFU and ultimately convince them to join?

> The first thing that caught my attention is the brand name. If there is one thing 750 million facebook users use other than facebook, it’s Google! Google was a part of the AFU’s e-life even before facebook came into existence. So if your AFU friends say why?, tell them because it’s Google!> G+ takes the best features of facebook and twitter, combines them, and then adds more features on top. So the AFUs can have their private social profiles just like on facebook where they can share pictures, videos, plans with their real life friends. At the same time they can see what their favorite celebrities are up to without their private life ever being exposed to them… just like twitter. And to add the cherry on top, they even get to do free 10 way video calls from within the browser (which in my opinion work much better than Skype group conferences).> Finally the chance to have everything in ONE place. The AFU hates having to manage too many accounts or too many smartphone apps. G+ offers the AFU the ability to control their e-life all from one black toolbar… mail, social profile, calendar, contacts, sharing, documents, photos, search, maps, youtube, translate, etc.> If the AFU has an Android, then they get the best social app (in my opinion). Everything that you need on the go is in that app. Besides the standard G+ features, it has Huddle which is better than texting, and it has Instant Upload which makes sharing pictures/videos as easy as taking them!> The data on google+ will belong to the AFU. With Google Takeout, the AFU can download all of their data whenever they want.> The AFUs love pictures and like sharing them with their friends. But the AFUs are not happy with the tiny resolution offered to them on facebook that compresses their party/vacation pictures and make them look awful. On google+ the AFU gets unlimited storage on PicasaWeb and can upload and see pictures in a much higher resolution! You can also edit pictures within your album and give them fancy effects to make them look great.

InterfaceAFUs like simple, clean and gorgeous UIs. AFUs hate adverts. AFUs like fast websites. That is exactly what the Google+ interface gives them. When I logged in to Google+ the first time, I was stunned by the beauty of the UI.

> Everything is crisp and well laid out. > The stream updates in real time. > You can drag and drop pictures from your desktop into the share box to publish them. > Profile and privacy editing can be done right from the profile page (which as the AFU knows is not the case with facebook.) > The profile does not look like it contains too much information and is hence easily readable. > The AFU can look through someone’s profile pictures without having to open the album. > Adding/editing/deleting your friends or circles is incredibly simple compared to facebook. > The Photos page is simply gorgeous with much better and larger preview thumbnails.> Managing your circles is not only easy and smooth, but also fun!> The text can be made bold or italic.> There are no adverts!

ApplicationThe AFU’s needs from the internet are:

> Stay in touch with friends> Communicate and share online differently with different friends depending on the real-life relationships> Stay up to date with interests like movies> Know what the favorite celebrities are up to> Chatting> Do all of the above from a mobile phone using one app only> Share ideas, links, pictures, videos> Checking in from a location or finding out what nearby friends are up to

Google+ offers all that and raises the bar by including two more killer features to redefine the application of a social network for an AFU: Hangouts and Huddles - communicating with a bunch of friends at the same time using the same snappy and crisp interface!

So, fellow +ers feel free to share this post on g+, facebook, twitter, etc. and highlight these aspects of Google+ for your AFU friends. These are the things they need to hear to join this network.

Feedback: Feel free to leave other pointers in the comments that would be relevant to an AFU.